So without further ado, I'm going to once again spend awhile talking about characters and themes before actually getting to the episode itself.
Violence in Game of Thrones
The show has a wildly different take on violence than the books and the early show.
Violence is actually surprisingly rare in the early seasons of Game of Thrones. The first season passes without a big battle episode, and we don't get real wholesale violence until The Battle of Blackwater at the conclusion of Season 2. True to the books, the battle of the Whispering Wood takes place off screen. The most notable incidents are Jaime vs. Ned, the betrayal of Ned by the Gold Cloaks, and the beheading of Ned. None of these are actions portrayed as badass or cool. In fact, main characters showing their combat prowess is unusual (If you sense that I think this show is at its best when people are sitting down and talking, you're right).
Anyway, this progressively changes as the show goes on. Violence and being a badass is increasingly shown as heroic and honorable. The most notable example here is Arya. The conclusion of Season 6 shows her slaughtering the Freys wholesale, and we're supposed to think it's laudatory? Earlier Thrones would have portrayed this as a somber scene, a moment to reflect on the detached killer Arya has become. In another similar moment, Sansa kills Ramsey Bolton by turning his dogs loose on him. A fitting end for Ramsey, yes. Something a "good" character does....I'm not sure.
Human on human violence is inherently a waste and tragic, because the game of thrones is irrelevant and you're going to need every person you can get in upcoming war versus the dead (remember when the Others were the main villains of the show?). To this end, the battles and intrigue are all pointless distractions and inherently sad because of it.
There is a notable early exception to this, and where the show starts changing how it portrays violence.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie, I love this whole scene.
But its a relevant plot moment when we get to season 7 and season 8. The show can't decide if using the dragons to burn up people is fine and badass or a war crime. The answer honestly seems to change based on the needs of the plot at the moment, and it's really frustrating to watch. In Season 7 Dany is urged to not just win the war and use her dragons by her advisors. Olenna says they're wrong and she should "be a dragon." Sure enough, Tyrion's "overly timid" approach gets them defeated at multiple turns by the teleporting Euron, putting Dany on the backfoot. She then follows her instincts and burns up a Lannister army. Cool, so using dragons is good, right? Well sorta, she goes a little far and burns up the Tarlys, which the show has confirmed to us was bad with Sam's reaction this season to it.
Last season I thought they were contriving her keeping her dragons in reserve so we could have a season and she wouldn't just win outright. And we're now back to the same plot tension, should she burn up King's Landing or not? Seems like a bad inhumane idea, but the show did want her to "be a dragon" last season so I don't know. We'll come back to this in a moment.
The Problem of Sansa
Sansa has been the single most frustrating character for me these last few seasons. Its especially galling because she was one of my three favorite characters in the first four seasons. I believe the moment they kicked off her season 5 plot (combined with the Dorne sidequest) was the moment the show started getting bad.
Sansa's plot in the first few seasons was essentially the death of innocence and her becoming a player in the game of thrones. It's a classic case of be careful what you wish for: wanting nothing more than to marry a prince and leave Winterfell, and suffering throughout the first few seasons for it. But she not only survives but thrives, learning from some of the best manipulators and politicians in the show and going from a sweet and naive girl to a smooth and calculating player in the game of thrones. The scene the screenshot above is from is one of my favorite moments of the entire show. After Baelish's murder of her aunt, Sophie Turner has a wonderfully acted out scene where she is playing Sansa acting like her younger self and convincing all the Vale lords her aunt committed suicide This is her official entrance into the game, symbolized by the framing of this shot and her costume change. She struts with newfound confidence, having thrived in KL and the Eeyrie, and ready to fuck shit up with Baelish.
I thought, naturally, that Season 5 would showcase her using her intelligence and wit, combined with the skills she learned from Cersei, Olenna, and Petyr to begin accumulating power. Instead it goes in a completely different direction.
It's hard to articulate just how much I hated this character. And no, not because the show writers wanted us to and were desperately trying to rekindle that Joffrey magic. This character was gratuitously cruel, immune to his own bad decision making, and got way too much screen time for his impact on the story. So, Season 5 starts with Petyr essentially selling Sansa off to him to be wed. Why Petyr would do this with the woman he loves is beyond me. While Sansa and Petyr do later have a scene about this in season 6, it's pretty unsatisfying and I don't buy his explanation or her forgiving him. But because we didn't write Jeyne Poole into the TV show and torturing Theon was getting old, we apparently needed someone else for Ramsey to abuse.
HE'S EVIL, DO YOU GET IT AUDIENCE? HERE'S SOME GRATUITOUS RAPE JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN'T.
Anyway, so after becoming a player in the game of thrones, Sansa is thrown into a situation where all her skills are worthless, and she just gets brutalized by Ramsey until her and Theon run away in the finale of the season. Four seasons of character growth are wasted as Sansa is once again a helpless bystander being acted upon like she was in season 1.
Let's rewrite this to preserve her character growth, shall we?
Maybe instead of a chaotic evil bad egg who is clearly supposed to be on the spectrum, Ramsey is just a bad dude. He wants power, is not particularly bothered by what methods he uses to get it, and likes torturing his enemies. Cool. He's also the bastard son of a relatively minor northern house and is probably something of an uncultured country bumpkin. Let's play with that. Sansa is a very beautiful and sophisticated daughter of privilege. Maybe Ramsey is smitten with her. Maybe she draws from Cersei's playbook and uses her femininity and sex to influence and control Ramsay. She becomes the true power in Winterfell through cunning and manipulation. This also sets up a fun conflict after Ramsey defeats Stannis and wants to kill Jon to remove any remaining rival claimants to Winterfell. Does she work against him and help install a brother she never liked? Or does she turn a blind eye to his cruelty but continue to hold sway?
But no, Sansa gets emotionally, physically, and sexually abused and ceases being an actor in her own story. This is where the problems begin, but it goes downhill from there.
In Season 6, she complains that people aren't asking her about what Ramsey is capable of in the lead up to the Battle of the Bastards and then when asked has nothing useful to say other than: "expect the unexpected." She sits on her Vale trump card and uses it at last minute after most of the Northmen and Wildlings have died because our show writers apparently watched the Battle of Helm's Deep once. She essentially doesn't do anything this season.
In Season 7, we have a contrived conflict between her and Arya that is purely for the benefit of the audience. The reveal in the final episode is that they never were at odds, and Petyr has been outflanked by their sisterhood. Cool. Almost fitting, at least Sansa got to finally use her political acumen to defeat an opponent. The shame is that the audience doesn't get to see it in action for the purpose of raising the tension.
In season 8 things haven't improved. Sansa has no grand character arc at this point. She is spiteful and petty and essentially here just to sow tension in the allied camp. I thought after seeing literally thousands of people (including most of Dany's army) die to protect Winterfell, she would have a little perspective and feel a little bit grateful to Dany for showing up to save their asses. But no, her last scene in this episode is her smirking about the possibility of Cersei winning. This is shortsightedness on par with Cersei's. What does she think will happen if Dany loses?
Aftermath
I unabashedly love the first third or so of this episode.
The funeral scene is actually pretty touching, especially Dany's Lost in Translation moment with Jorah. There's a weight in the air. Opening the feast without music was a good move from this episode's director, and it allows for a natural transition from the quiet and awkward beginning to the celebration of life that caps it off. This scene has lots of great character interactions and I love it.
Dany asks the question I've been wondering since Season 3: "Who is Lord in Storm's End?" and appoints Gendry as the new storm lord. The Hound is gruff and sets up Pod to score a threesome. Tormund finally has his heard broken by Brienne. Sansa and the Hound reunite. Gendry proposes to Arya, she refuses - sad but appropriate for her character. Brienne and Jamie pay off all their tension and fuck. I would have been fine with a romantic or platonic direction for their relationship, but honestly really liked it.
My only critique would be that this is probably the last time we're going to get sex on screen in Game of Thrones, and it was all really restrained. This would have been a good moment for the show to make up for its earlier constant objectification of women and show us an erect dick on screen. But whatever.
The trouble begins when Dany and Jon meet up
Dany wants Jon to not tell anybody the secret of his parentage, correctly assuming that people will pressure him to be king. Jon, either willfully naive or lawful stupid insists he needs to tell his sisters. Dany has a "mad queen" moment and orders him not to share it.
I don't get the pressure to tell his sisters. Jon claims it's because they're his family, but he has never showed inclination to share really crucial information with them to date. Notably, Jon still hasn't spelled out to his sisters: "Oh yeah, I died, then I came back - btw there is no afterlife." Jon's death continues to be a really unsatisfying plot point because of the lack of impact it has had on the character. But yeah, he's insisting on telling his sisters because we need tension and something for Dany to be mad at him about in an episode or two.
Anyway, we then get to the war planning scene, one of my least favorite scenes in GOT to date. Sansa says the men need to rest before marching south. Dany, after hearing Varys say the Cersei loses allies by the day, contradicts him and says "my enemies grow stronger by the day," and Jon tries to get in good with his aunt by insisting they will march immediately. This scene also suffers from the "Sansa is upset but doesn't have an alternative suggestion" problem. How long do the men need to recover? Fucked if she knows.
Also, shout out to the writers for remembering that Dorne exists.
Anyway, here is how real characters would have behaved in this scene:
Dany: We need to march immediately
Sansa: We just barely fought off the dead and many of the men are wounded. If you march right now, only half of the Northmen will be able to make the long journey south.
Dany: How long do your forces need to recover?
Sansa: Hard to say, two weeks?
Dany: You get a week.
Boom, instead of an uncomfortable scene where the audience doesn't know who has the better point (having not seen the state of the Northern armies or been appraised of Cersei's support), we have a simple normal human moment between these characters that allows them to compromise.
But no, we needed a reason for Arya to take Jon out to the Godswood for a Stark Council. A leading comment is made and Jon takes the moment to spill the beans about his parentage. We don't even get to see their reaction shot. Upon swearing she won't share the information, Sansa immediately decides to stir the pot and tell Tyrion, who tells Varys. I swear its like a middle school cafeteria.
More Stuff I Liked
I want to call out a few more good things I liked before I bring this home.
I loved Jon's scenes with Tormund and Sam, especially his scene with Sam. I was surprised by how emotional it made me. For all intents and purposes, this was the goodbye for both of these characters and the scene with Sam was very touching.
I also loved all the Varys and Tyrion scenes this episode. It was a callback to early Game of Thrones. I wondered why Varys lived through last episode, and now I see why. I do find his sudden lack of confidence in Dany a little contrived, but its more or less in line with his character, and it gave us some good scenes if nothing else. I expect Dany will cap his ass next episode.
Bronn's scene was mostly pointless, but I liked seeing him interact with Tyrion and Jaime again.
Jaime's arc with Brienne ended more quickly than I would have liked, but their final scene together was heart-wrenching and it showcased just how broken of a man Jaime is. I expect he's off to KL to kill his sister now and will fast travel down there in time for next episode.
I love that Arya is leaving on a road trip with the Hound, and I can all but hear the airhorns of CleganeBowl on the horizon. I do feel like a scene was cut where Arya had a final scene with Sansa though, saying she didn't like everyone treating her like a hero and wanted to just be left alone. She says she has unfinished business in the south, is she going to kill Cersei? She did say she would not return to Winterfell which makes me really sad we didn't give her one more scene with Bran and Sansa.
It's pretty obvious they were tired of trying to come up with something for Ghost to do, so he's been exiled north. Jon doesn't even give the good earless boy a pet for his bravery against the Others.
Jon deserves death for this of course.
The Mad Queens
I don't dislike a "mad queen" arc for Dany. It would have been a really compelling "person vs. self" struggle to frame season 7 around (see my last post on GOT). But at this point, it's a straight up ass pull. It was barely set up in one scene last season and a comment by Sam this season. Yes Dani has had violent moments in past seasons as an unforgiving arbiter of justice, but based on how her use of violence has been portrayed in the past its weird to suddenly use it to inform a "mad queen" arc. You can't dump this idea on us last minute with three episodes to go. I swear to god if they have Dany die unredeemed from this bout with madness I'm going to riot.
I've previously noted that Dany's whole "break the wheel" bit always feels a little hollow to me. She's not doing anything radically different from her predecessors. She has been cruel and intransigent before, notably in crucifying the Masters in Mereen. However, the whole point of her arc in season 5 (or so I thought) was her moving away from that and learning to compromise and govern. Time and time again: in her liberation of slaves, in her going north to save the realms of men, she has shown herself to be a humane and selfless ruler. Not perfect, but clearly not her father. But here, with 2 1/2 episodes of the show to go, our writers have decided her final arc is going to be "IS SHE A MAD QUEEN?" That shit should have been more or less wrapped up by this point if they wanted to go in that direction, or at least better set up last season.
So, Euron shows up to once again to pull of his favorite move: being exactly where he needs to be at a given time to even the odds for Cersei and fuck up Dany's day. Somehow, ships, as in things on the water, get the drop on dragons, you know, things in the sky that should have seen the things in the water from miles away.
DIDN'T SEEING THAT DRAGON SHOT OUT OF THE SKY SURPRISE YOU AND SUBVERT YOUR EXPECTATIONS!?!?!?!!
Anyway, Euron Sureshot lands three ballista shots on a distant dragon, killing it. It has been pointed out to me that this one was the wounded one. It makes it slightly better, but still doesn't explain how they got the drop on Rhaegal. Nor does it explain the aimbot worthy accuracy of these shots. We see them fire off subsequent volleys at Dany and hilariously miss.
Anyway, then Euron revolutionizes naval warfare in Westeros and uses the ballistas to destroy Dany's plucky little fleet as the five foot bolts disintegrate the ships they hit instead of puching nice little holes in the sides like giant arrows actually would. Anyway, most of her remaining Unsullied presumably drown here b based on the number that join her outside King's Landing. He captures Missandei and nobody else because we needed a named character to die this episode.
How did Euron even know they had won their war vs. the Others? Did Winterfell send an "all's clear" raven? Did they just sit there for weeks on end waiting for Dany to pass by the exact spot? How did they know Dany would sail to Dragonstone and not march down from the North with Jon? Was there a similar ambush waiting at the Trident?
Congratulations show, Euron Grayjoy has now killed as many dragons as did the NK.
So, going into this episode I was like: "Well, Dany's army is depleted, but she still has two dragons so she should just be able to win this thing whenever she wants. The original Targaryen's took this entire continent with only 5000 men and three dragons."
The writers apparently realized this too, and so brought Euron back to even the odds more for Cersei.
It irritates me so much that the writers have made Cersei artificially smart. She makes the boneheaded move of not helping in the war versus the undead, and actually turns out to have made the correct choice. Let that sink in for a minute. She makes the selfish, shortsighted decision that should have bitten her in the ass, and it turns out to have been the correct call. If Tyrion has been artificially dumb recently, Cersei has become artificially brilliant, and I hate it.
I'm So Done
So Dany shows up to pointlessly parley with Cersei.
Immediately you notice that outside the walls of the most populous city in the Seven Kingdoms is apparently a desert wasteland. But whatever, we have two episodes to go and I can't be bothered to care about little details like this anymore
Cersei has a comical number of ballistas atop the walls. And immediately the viewer is like: "Wait, is it even an option for Dany to burn this city anymore?" It seems like these guys will just nail that dragon the moment Dany tries anything. Apparently it is? The dragons have officially become as invincible or vulnerable as the narrative needs them to be at a given moment.
Cersei is so villainous she will do anything except apparently order her archers and ballistas to open up on her hated brother and enemy queen when they are in clear firing range. Drogon clearly landed in range of all these ballistas. You're telling me Cersei didn't tell them to open fire and kill the opponent's last dragon when they had a chance? Maybe they're not as good of marksmen as Euron.
This whole scene is frustrating because Missandei dies for no reason, just offed as a human stake raiser. There is no reason she had to be captured, and no reason for Cersei to kill her. The entire point of having a hostage is to dissuade your opponent from attacking. Cersei realized this with Sansa back in season 3 but apparently not now. Likewise, Rhaegal doesn't die because Dany made a mistake; took him on an overzealous scouting mission or moved south before he had healed enough to fly. There was no scene with Dany tending to her dragon and noting: "he still has a gimp wing." The characters, human and dragon, are just dying randomly at this point unmoored from any of their choices.
Anyway, I guess we're going to get a battle next episode, or something. I'm 81 episodes invested in this show so I am here for the end at this point. But man, my low expectations for this episode were somehow not low enough. If last episode missed on the theming and showed a profound inability to understand the core conflict of Game of Thrones, this episode displays a shocking degree of disregard for its characters.
It's notable that this episode is essentially an overstuffed turkey, with ingredients for three episodes in it. As a result, the pacing feels really off yet again, with a really long opening sequence followed by large jumps in time as the show writers try to get everyone in place for yet another huge battle. And yet, on the brink of the finale to Game of Thrones it couldn't feel smaller or less epic. Cersei is the Queen of a city, one kingdom, and some mercenaries (WHERE ARE MY ELEPHANTS), and Dany has two depleted kingdom's armies at her back alongside the scrappy remnants of her own armies (seriously show, you expect me to believe half of the Dothraki lived through that last episode?) and one dragon. Whereas the stakes for the last one were the FATE OF HUMAN LIFE, now it's which flavor or mad queen do you want on the throne.
Woooooo.
See you next week.
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